to an addon I am making. I will let you know how it goes if you are interested.

This seems to be the opposite of what I need. I have ratings saved in my ID3 tags. What I want is to be able to read that metadata in iTunes since I'm only using it to load tracks to my shuffle and buy the occasional download. F2K is my primary player

iTunes stores the rating, playcount, and various other information in your actual library database file. iTunes cannot read ratings or playcounts made by other programs. So the only way for you to have such information is to do it all manually through iTunes. iTunes will also store album art in your library file if you have it look up the artwork automatically. I am not quite sure why Apple took this approach with the ratings and playcounts but they did.

iTunes stores the rating, playcount, and various other information in your actual library database file. iTunes cannot read ratings or playcounts made by other programs. So the only way for you to have such information is to do it all manually through iTunes. iTunes will also store album art in your library file if you have it look up the artwork automatically. I am not quite sure why Apple took this approach with the ratings and playcounts but they did.

Doesn't it read the tags for the rest of the metadata? I guess I was thinking some sort of scripting could copy the values into iTunes?

There might be a Apple script doing this. iTunes will read most of the data off of the mp3's ID3 tag (or metadata). Information such as song title, album, song #, song # of, year, genre, etc. I believe that the only thing iTunes uses your library file for is playcount, ratings, and album art if it isn't embedded. I am not sure what OS you are on though. Forget it if you are on Windows, do some Google searching if you are on Mac OS X.

There are plenty of websites offering Apple scripts that deal with iTunes. Someone made an Apple script to embed album art in songs using iTunes a long time ago. It took Windows users about a year or maybe even longer to finally make a program that would use iTunes to do this.

to an addon I am making. I will let you know how it goes if you are interested.

This seems to be the opposite of what I need. I have ratings saved in my ID3 tags. What I want is to be able to read that metadata in iTunes since I'm only using it to load tracks to my shuffle and buy the occasional download. F2K is my primary player

wolfsong, I dont it is the opposite. I have listed both ways import/export if you look carefully.

When you say "use the information stored in the ID3 RATING tag" do you mean they are stored in the PCNT or POPM frame? If that's so I have implemented just that.